“If you’re going to write in a worthwhile way about something, you have to really understand why you care.”
Novel Dialogue
Novel Dialogue invites a novelist and a literary critic to talk about novels from every angle: how we read them, write them, publish them, and remember them.
Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies
“A lot of people have been pushed a little closer to the margins.”
In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans
“I'm aware, as I'm writing, that I'm changing camera angles.”
The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu Speaks to Chris Fan
“I am paralyzed by the infinite degrees of freedom that you start out with, and so constraints can be freeing. To say, I can start here—I'm writing a story about time travel.”
The Romance of Recovery: Ben Bateman Talks to Shola von Reinhold
“I don't really want to write about theory, but it just keeps coming up again and again. It's inescapable.”
Why Are You in Bed? Why Are You Drinking? Colm Tóibín and Joseph Rezek in Conversation
“The novel loves things. It loves money. It loves disappointment.”
Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell, and Kate Briggs on Translation
“You’re making decisions with every word, and a lot of times, those decisions are unconscious.”
Light and Sound: Boubacar Boris Diop with Sarah Quesada
“I was more impressed by what I heard from my mother than by what I read in the library.”
Strange Beasts of Translation: Yan Ge and Jeremy Tiang in Conversation
“A Short, Sharp Punch to the Face”: Alia Trabucco Zerán and Sophie Hughes Talk Translation
Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Baptiste Naudy on Claude McKay
Reading by Translating: Ann Goldstein Talks with Saskia Ziolkowski